Rock News

Paul McCartney asks fans to 'Drive My Car' to drive-in premieres

(Yahoo!) - You're familiar with "new car smell." Paul McCartney wanted some of his fans to experience NEW car sound.

So, Sunday night, he offered the chance for hundreds of fans in Los Angeles and New York to be the first to hear his new recording — appropriately titled NEW — via album premieres held at real or makeshift drive-in theaters. "I love listening to music in the car," McCartney explained on his website. "It’s like listening with a huge pair of headphones! You’re in there and the sound is wrapped around you." In a nation of earbuds, he's got something there.

Yahoo! attended the west coast listening party, held at L.A. County's one remaining drive-in, the Vineland, about 20 miles southeast of downtown in the unglamorous City of Industry. In Manhattan, you have to travel considerably farther outside of town to get to the nearest ozoner (as Variety used to call them). So McCartney had his own drive-in set up on the roof of a VW/Audi dealership, where pedestrians stood in line for the chance to sit in new cars borrowed from the showroom for the occasion.

In both cities, while the sound was pumped over the drive-in's FM frequency, the projected image consisted solely of a reproduction of the cover imagery for NEW, along with the song titles and an occasional reminder to tweet reactions using the hashtag #mccartneydrivein. At the Vineland in L.A., host Chris Carter looked across the vast lot at the three other outdoor screens and quipped, "Those people watching Gravity must look over here and think, 'That looks like a really boring movie.'"